An increasingly common application for computer technology is the decoding of information placed on various media. For example, bar codes are used extensively in the retail industry as are magnetic codes in the financial industry. The process by which such information is "read" by a computer and decoded is generically referred to as electronic character recognition. Numerous media reader devices now exist for sensing or reading coded information and transmitting the information to a computer. Such reader devices may be broadly categorized by the type of media storing the data, i.e., either optical or magnetic. Common optical readers include bar code wands, bar code slot readers, laser scanners, and CCD scanners. A common magnetic reader is a magnetic slot reader.
Prior art systems for reading coded data typically have one of the above media devices connected to a dedicated line for receiving data from such device. If more than one type of media device is to be utilized, separate input lines and typically separate computers for receiving the data signals are required.